räsonanz – Munich 2024
Stefan Blunier
Born in Bern in 1964, conductor Stefan Blunier studied piano, horn, composition and conducting in his home town and at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. After working in Mainz, Augsburg and Mannheim, he was General Music Director at the Staatstheater Darmstadt from 2001 to 2008. In 2008, Blunier took over the position of General Music Director of the Beethovenstadt Bonn and thus simultaneously became Chief Conductor of the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and the Bonn Opera. At the beginning of the 2010/2011 season, Stefan Blunier was appointed Premier Chef Invité of the Orchestre National de Belgique in Brussels.
At the turn of 2011/2012, Blunier travelled to China with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and gave acclaimed concerts in the metropolises of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, among others. In 2013, the BOB travelled to the East Coast and Florida on its USA tour. The great success of the twelve concerts prompted a re-invitation in spring 2016. From 2017 to 2026, he holds a professorship for symphonic conducting at the Mannheim State University of Music and Performing Arts and is therefore also the director of the university orchestra and director of the Baden-Württemberg Conducting Centre. Since 2020, Stefan Blunier has also been Maestro titular (chief conductor) at the Orquestra Sinfónica (Casa da Música) in Porto.
As a prizewinner at the international conducting competitions in Besançon and Malko in Copenhagen, Stefan Blunier began his busy concert career at an early age. Since then, he has made guest appearances with over 100 symphony orchestras in Europe and Asia. He has conducted at the opera houses in London, Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Leipzig, Stuttgart and Berlin (KOB and DOB) as well as in Montpellier, Stockholm, Oslo, Zurich, Geneva and Bern.
Stefan Blunier`s concert programmes have delighted audiences in recent seasons. The conductor’s success with the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn has aroused national interest in music from Bonn. Stefan Blunier has produced 35 CDs for SONY, CPO, CRYSTAL, HYPERION and MDG. For the CD recordings of the operas Der Golem by Eugen dʼAlbert and Irrelohe by Franz Schreker, he was awarded the ECHO Klassik Prize together with BOB in 2011 and 2012. Stefan Blunier has conducted world premieres of works by Mark-Anthony Turnage, Unsuk Chin, Johannes Maria Staudt, Georg Friedrich Haas and Wim Henderickx, among others.